New netbook for xmas,as old one is dead.I have tried sharepod,but it is not shifting playlists or apps and has lost 200 songs.I may as well pay for one,any suggestions of which of the many to buy or experiences would be welcome.Thanks

Itunes is excellent and free.

Alas, itunes will only recognise the 400 or so songs I have purchased,and ignore all the work I put in on the long dark nights putting all my cd into old computer.

What format are the importred songs in?

try Senuti – free for the 1st 1000 songs.

Music Rescue, costs a tenner but super easy to use and allows multiple Ipods to be transferred into a single I tunes libary

Don’t know if it works for newer generation iPods, but this works with my 2nd gen. version.

In iTunes, set the ipod to work as an external hard drive.
Make hidden folders visible.
Browse your iPod folders. You will find a lot of folders with odd names that contain the music files. From memory, the folders have a letter and a number to name them. The files won’t have the full names, but they should be obvious from the file extensions.

*IMPORTANT* Copy these files to a new folder on your computer. Then, make a separate BACKUP copy of the whole iPod in a different folder, just to be safe.

Unplug your iPod.
Get iTunes to Add Files from a folder. Point the import tool to the root directory of the music files you copied from your iPod.
iTunes will rename the files, add artists, album names etc when you it adds the files.

This does not import playlists unfortunately.
Once you are satisfied that you have all the music on the new iTunes you can then sync the iPod.

If all else fails, you still have the music on your iPod.

Delete the files on you PC when you feel all is well.

I did the same as 49er Jerry. Worked well for me. Losing playlists is a pain, but I can live with that.

49ers suggestion only works on Ipod classics. Apple wised up to the hard drive option allowing ‘piracy’ of non purchased files so omitted this option from the touch and iPhone

I use “media widget” and have never had any problems. Not sure about the playlists thing though.